You can park on the street, in the lot on site, in the lot behind the building off of 20th street between Vernor and Bagley Ave., or in the lot directly behind the Welcome Center off of 20th street and Bagley Ave. See map:

The building has 24 hour security, although we encourage you to not leave anything valuable behind. In the unlikely event, Startup Weekend and the Ford Resource and Engagement Center are not liable for any loss or theft of personal property.

We know you are all responsible adults, but just to be clear on expectations please read the following:

Absolutely NO ALCOHOL – violation of this expectation is cause for removal from the event. No exceptions.

There will be other activities (not many) going on in the venue while we are there, please be respectful.

This space is gorgeous, we will leave it as we found it. Please take the time to clean up after yourself and your team – this is everyone’s responsibility.

The venue has a computer lab – this will NOT be available for use over the weekend. If this changes we will let you know.

White boards will be in short supply but we will do our best to stock you with the resources you might need. However, it is never a bad idea to bring extra paper/pens/highlighters/etc. Please see below for a list of things you should bring.

FOOD!

We sure have an awesome weekend of food planned for ya’ll. Absopure has generously provided ALL of the coffee and water you can drink.. seriously, the supply is endless! Plus, we will have soft drinks.

Pitches on Friday night will be in a “pitch-fire” format, which means you will have just 60 seconds to get the audience interested in your idea. You will have no slides or props -just your voice. You won’t have time to go over features, so just focus on the core of the idea and make your enthusiasm contagious. Here is the format for pitches that we recommend:

Who are you and what is your background? (5-10 Seconds)

Whatis the problem that your product is solving? Or, begin with a story (10-20 Seconds)

Explain the product and how it solves the problem (10-20 seconds)

Who do you need on your team (a developer, marketing, designer?) (5-10 seconds)

Finally, make up a name for your startup so the facilitator can give it a title

Voting & Forming Teams

After pitches, you will have more time to mingle. If you pitched an idea, this is your time to start recruiting others that may be interested in your idea. If you did not pitch, or if you are having trouble finding others to join your team, use this time to seek out those that pitched other ideas that you found interesting.

Next, the crowd votes on their favorite pitches.This is simply a way to encourage quick team forming. This is by no means an exclusive process and if you pitched an idea and it is not voted as one of the top ideas, you are more than welcome to work on it if you find some other people who want to work on the idea with you. From there we will form teams and these are the startup ideas that will be worked on over the weekend.

Get user feedback on your customer – PickFu is a lean user testing service that helps entrepreneurs get quick feedback on their ideas and designs. It’s great for getting insight on business propositions, company names, logos, or UI mockups in a matter of minutes — perfect for iterating on a compressed timeline. This tool is great to: (1) Hone ideas at the beginning of the weekend; (2) Get customer validation data for the presentations.